A/N: Completing this chapter was a real struggle for me. As I explained earlier in the last update; I have depression, and I still have it. Nevertheless and to my complete amazement I managed to plow through the writer's block. I am not in the 'zone' yet, but I feel like I am getting there.
The Arrowhead was drifting, engines and running lights dark. The sleek, intimidating hull of the destroyer glinted in the dim light of a distant star and it's smaller binary sibling like a discarded blade. The destroyer barely had time to raise it's gellar fields before being dragged into the warp, but they had not been raised quite quickly enough.
The fourth generation Navigation Construct was a special form of AI part of the group designated 'Men of Gold' it's focus was narrowed upon a singular point which was the safe and speedy traversal of the Immaterium. What was unique about this type of AI was it's inclusion of biological components. A large casket stuffed with psi-sensitive vat grown gray matter that enabled the construct to gaze upon the warp.
As a society that rejected psychics in all their forms, the Federation unlike it's successor in the Imperium, had not grown to grasp the utility to be found in a basic hexagrammic ward, which was of course a product of psykers. The artificial psi-material used in the Navigation AI was as close to the realm of the Warp the Federation was willing to get. So the only real defense this AI had was the gellar field itself, and it's own narrow frame of intent. So when the Arrowhead was dragged towards the Warp, this same material was exposed to the fury of the Warp without insulation for the briefest of moments. And while the gellar fields had been activated before the ship and crew could be harmed, the seed of Change had already been planted.
The Arrowhead had only been in the Warp for a few seconds before being spat out again two months forward in the material realm. And only moments out of emergence, a crisis was already unfolding.
The Nav-Core had been transformed into a scene of untold carnage when some thing emerged from the casket containing the neural tissue component, a screaming veined hulk of multiple maws and tentacles lashed out at the technicians stationed there, slaughtering everything within it's variable reach. The armsmen present, while not even comprehending the idea that things like Chaos Spawn could exist, nevertheless did not hesitate to open fire. They did not last long.
The marines stationed on board were aware of the threat immediately via the sensors built into their power armor; the wildly fluctuating psionic waveforms registered on their autosenses like a flare in the darkness. With the local mindlink network down, they were not able to coordinate effectively to contain the threat, instead entire squads and individual soldiers converged on the aberration with the intention of neutralizing it.
Federation soldiers were not typically prone to silly things like panic, two-centuries of fighting murderous three-meter tall machines, and insane psychically active fey humanoids had demanded that such impulses be replaced with a fight or flight response programmed into the psyche through hypnotherapy and reinforced by instinctual focused aggression. But that was not to say they were incapable of fear.
And fear was precisely what the soldiers of seventh squad felt when they witnessed this unfathomable mass of writhing, changing meat burn through the deck in front of them, screaming, crying, and laughing as it lurched towards them. But fear was meant to be conquered, and the warriors of the 25th Millennium were well practiced in mastering it.
"Take it down!" The sergeant leading the squad snapped into the comm link. Assault railguns trained on the creature in an eyeblink.
A furious barrage of hypersonic expanding point spikes struck the creature in the center of mass, had it been a conventional opponent, the creature would have been reduced to a scattered mess of shredded meat and pulverized bone, but this thing was far from conventional. The darts tore right through it and it's gray flesh opened up and burst under the punishment, but it would not die.
The creature reformed itself even as it was being ripped to pieces. A fleshy frond covered in spikes launched from the contorting mass and speared right through the shields and chest of the closest marine, his gun dropped to the floor as he was reeled toward the spawn screaming defiantly as he attempted to hack at the tentacle with his powered chain knife. The spawn's body opened like a flower as it moved to accept it's prey, the flesh petals closed around him and within moments his vital signs stopped transmitting to the rest of his squad.
"Switch to grav!" The sergeant ordered. The marines immediately switched their ammunition, and proceeded to fire again. The rice grain sized gravity bending payloads imbedded into dense spikes activated with incredible force, hurling molecular shrapnel in spherical arcs; a burst of these spikes could obliterate a human target – or wreck an iron drone.
The creature flew to pieces. But it was not dead, now it was a thrashing squirrel nest of toothed fronds and fire spewing maws.
"Bravo-three cover fire, retreat to bay 7." If they could not kill it, they were spacing it. With refined efficiency, the team withdrew further down the corridor.
The Spawn gave chase, it's constantly changing bulk dragged, crawled, and swung through the corridor after the retreating humans. It chased them all the way to bay 7, just as the sergeant hoped it would.
Passing through the large bulkhead doors, the surviving team members entered into a high ceiling loading bay.
The monster came in howling moments after. The beast suddenly doubled in size, and swung a tentacle thick as a young tree towards them. The marines managed to evade the attack, save for one who was slammed into the wall and the dragged towards the spawn to be torn to pieces.
"I am going for the override! Cover me!" The sergeant shouted as he ran towards the end of the bay, where the override was situated between two sets of massive airlock doors. The staccato of railgun fire filled the cargo bay ass he crossed the distance. The creature lashed out again, sending a small shipping container flying into a much larger one. The container, which was normally held in place by powerful electromagnets and mooring clamps, had not been properly secured with the latter measure, and with power out the magnets locks were no longer functioning. Therefore when the small container hit the larger one, it toppled over, right onto the sergeant. The leading edge of the falling container struck him in the shoulder, spinning him onto his back a mere second before smashing to the deck on top of his legs. He was so close to the override.
He could only helplessly watch as the men under his command continued to fire ineffectually on the spawn. As if finally getting tired of being pelted by graviton enhanced hypersonic projectiles, the creature began to rapidly swell up like a fleshy balloon. It then rapidly deflated, every mouth on the spawn unleashed a merciless gout of warp fire in every direction, filling the entire confined space with eldritch destruction.
The sergeant turned away from the attack, he roared out in pain as he felt the golden flames burn through his armor and sear his flesh. The men closest to the creature simply melted like candle wax under a plasma torch. As if noticing he was still breathing, the creature began lurching towards him. The sergeant looked down at his legs, pinned down under the heavy cargo container, then looked at the manual override for the bay doors.
He grabbed the handle of the chainripper from where it was clamped to the back of his combat harness. With a split moment of hesitation, he activated the spinning glowing teeth and slashed down at his trapped limbs. He screamed as he sawed off both legs below the knees, armor plating, flesh and bone alike parted under the rapidly spinning blades. The instant he was free, he kicked away on his bloody stumps toward the override lever.
As his shaking hand closed around it, he looked back at the monster that now loomed over him.
"Ave Terra."
The lock opened. The vacuum of space sucked the molten remains of the marines, the barely living sergeant, and the screaming warp spawn into the black abyss.
He felt one of the spawn's tentacles wrap around him as he tumbled through space. There was no question in the man's mind that he was about to die. Birthed from a tube, no parent save for the state, he had been awaiting this moment for his entire life. With a thought, a countdown timer appeared in the center of his heads up display. Five seconds.
The sergeant smiled grimly at the howling creature as it's maws closed around him, the self-destruct protocol initiated. Both man and beast disappeared in a corona of plasma fire.
Commissar Ciaphas Cain – Hero of the Imperium! - was not an average political officer. For one thing the grunts harbored no fantasies of tucking live grenades into his sash while he was not looking, and the officers actually felt comfortable enough around him to be a little loose on protocol. That was exactly how he liked it, no hard feelings, no pressure, and no risk of dying heroically in the line of duty – suspiciously far from the front lines.
Indeed there was nothing in this ill fated galaxy Cain enjoyed more than peace and quiet alongside a piping hot mug of tanna. But sadly given the state of today's Imperium, the former was simply wishful thinking.
Ciaphas took a long sip of the bitter Valhallan tea as he tried to sink further inside his black greatcoat in a vain attempt to ward off the frigidness of Colonel Kasteen's office. The commanding officer of the Valhallan 597th herself was seated behind a plain plastiform desk wearing little more than her regulation tank top and trousers, her XO Major Broklaw stood off to the side in a similar state of dress, preferring to stand closer to the damnable air conditioning unit.
The ice worlders true to name took unadulterated pleasure in enduring the most abominable extremes of cold climate. Yet it was still not enough to dampen the stench of his aide de camp Jurgen who was standing outside the office, (due to a long standing agreement between himself and the Colonel that Jurgen would not be permitted within ten paces of her unless absolutely necessary).
"How many this time?" Cain asked without preamble.
"Five," Broklaw answered, "We would have flogged them on the spot but they were on a completely different planet by the time they were in the brig."
"That makes sixteen so far for our regiment. Names?" Kasteen asked tiredly.
"Privates Shano, Heelie, Kron, Bowskie, and corporal Stanner."
"Stanner is a glitterhead? That's a surprise," Cain mused aloud. For the past month being stationed on Auroaei Prime the Valhallan 597th alongside the Balurian 15th, and 202nd Armageddon Steel Legion had been suffering from the influence of the local flavor, namely a powerful recreational narcotic called Glitterdust. The drug was infamous for causing full body itching, fast heart rate, hallucinations, and paranoid delusions when taken in quantity; those afflicted had often been found naked, screaming nonsense, and writing strange symbols on the ground. The result had been a powderkeg explosion of unacceptable conduct.
"Two years of ratting out his fellow noncoms for every minor infraction and polishing the colons of his betters does not equate to virtue commissar," Kasteen said flatly, "Frankly I am relieved to know he is crooked. I want Stanner stripped of his rank and assigned along with his compatriots to the cleaning crew. Permanently."
"A pity, he was so eager to please too. I will make the arrangements." Cain replied.
"Before you go, there is another outstanding issue," Broklaw said, eyes switching to the Colonel.
A deep frown formed on the woman's face, "I had an idiot in a shiny suit come into my office two hours ago, a representative of the Navis Nobilite."
The room seemed to grow colder as Cain's expression hardened. The three regiments had come to this world to put down a rebellion, one that the Navis Nobilite had caused. The Navigator houses were a major component in Holy Terra's power structure, and were as a result incredibly influential and wealthy. They were also unpopular with the masses, and seemed to have less real friends than Jurgen on shore leave. The Nobilite's presence on Auroei took the form of a large citadel presided over by a cadet branch of a larger Navigator house. This house effectively owned the planet, and used the world's revenue to enrich it's parent house. For the most part the people did not really mind, being only interested in living their lives in peace. The trouble started with a mutant woman called Lady Arbella Volranis.
The Lady's father had passed on two years ago, and as his eldest child she immediately assumed his position, and immediately sought to ingratiate herself to the parent house, by getting them more money. She soon came to discover she could lease the planet to it's population, as by law Auroei Prime was the property of House Volranis. Having to pay rent for their own homeworld did not settle well with the Auroeisian populace, but they had no choice but to cooperate. Unsatisfied with the bottom line, Lady Arbella increased the charge of rent to ever higher rates until the people were incapable of paying it. Seeing that wide swathes of the population were no longer able to pay their rents Arbella, in an act of even greater foolishness declared every debtor to be an indentured servant to her house. They revolted instead.
"What do those gits want now?" Cain asked.
The lines of anger deepened in Kasteen's face, "To celebrate the seventh nameday of her youngest brat, Lady Volranis has requested our regiment to contribute resources to a parade being held in his honor."
Cain suppressed the urge to bury his face into his hands in dismay. "Is she giving us a choice?"
Kasteen's lips pressed together in a thin line, "No. The Steel Legion has also been forced into this charade, half of their motorpool has been sucked into this extravagance, including the Fortress of Arrogance."
"She took the BANEBLADE?!" Cain was out of his seat in shock. Most of the 202nd's most successful offensive strategies against the rebels had revolved around that vehicle. Without it the Steel Legion's firepower would be dramatically reduced.
"I believe that was Commissar Yarrick's reaction as well," Kasteen said. Cain vaguely remembered seeing the grizzled old man during meetings between the regiments commanding officers. The man seemed a little long in the tooth and was probably not long for retirement. Cain envied him for that.
"What is our response going to be?"
"I am not going to have military resources squandered to sate that three-eyed whore's ego, especially not from my command!" she said fiercely, "Colonel Grall and Yarrick are right now planning to go over to the Volranis estate, you and I will join them Commissar."
Fighting enraged rebels with depleted armor support, or confronting an erratic and politically incompetent mutant that has the power to kill a man with a look. Cain could not quite decide which was more likely to result in his untimely death. Holding back a defeated sigh, Cain simply said: "When do we leave?"
With the carnage in the engineering section put to an end, work in the ship continued as normal – though disturbed by an agitated air of unease over what had just been witnessed. Thirty-five military personnel including a whole squad of marines had been brutally slaughtered by the rampaging thing that was once the navigation core.
Replacement parts was standard practice in the Federation Navy, there was little aboard the Arrowhead that could not be replaced, the Navigation System was one of these things. However the core was more than just an advanced computer, it was a cybernetic construct that reflected the height of mankind's reclaimed scientific prowess. When the manufacture and maintenance of mutants was banned at the Council of Zama shortly after the Iron War, the Navigator strains had been no exception; luckily a suitable replacement for their obscene ilk had been in circulation before the Enclave unleashed it's holocaust upon aboriginal human life.
But these machines were not infallible, while most components were capable of self-maintenance, the organic portion of the core was not capable of this feat. The Navigation AI used this component to cast it's eye in the warp, making calculations and corrections far faster than the mutant Navigators were capable of, but that was only because they could overclock the synthetic wetware to allow ships to slice through the Warp without needing to follow it's twisting current. However, this was taxing on the vat grown gray matter, and every so often it needed to be replaced.
Spare psi-caskets were stored inside a temperature controlled vault in their dozens. All of them were now pulled out onto the floor from their racks, cases cracked open to reveal their brain-like contents. But it was all wrong. Limp tentacles, half-formed eyes and maws distorted the once pristine masses. They had been Changed.
"This is not unprecedented," the CSO Roland Winger said, "We've had caskets go rotten before."
"But not the entire stock all at once," Commander Adina Keeler said, her jaw clenching as the ramifications of this disaster settled on her more with each passing second of gazing at the physical corruption lying in front of her. "And never like this." She gestured to the disgusting mutated growths.
"The very nature of the Warp is unexplainable. We could have gotten ashes and snowflakes, this entire ship could have been turned inside out, all I know is that we will never know exactly what happened."
And there was the truth. Keeler had seen men have their organs ripped out by invisible fingers, tanks implode by a mere thought, and worlds turned upside down by gifted humans and aliens who sought to bend the Warp to their will. Not for the first time she wished that the Federation had been able to reverse engineer the inertialess drives used by the Morrtus Dominion to propel their ships between the stars by bending the background radiation count of the Universe. It would have been damn helpful in stopping the collapse of the Federation and sending the Eldar race to their well deserved extinction. But alas humanity was forced to treat with the Warp for the foreseeable future.
"I want these things incinerated. I will not chance one of them turning into another one of those things."
"If you say so ma'am. But that also leaves to question how we are getting out of here. Our long ranged comm-router was never jacked in when we left Rapture City, so we will not be getting any rescue any time soon."
"The system we are in is inhabited, if they have something we can use we will requisition it."
"And if they refuse?"
"Then I will make them regret it."
